What is up with James Hata and the Fire resource symbol? Take a look at the promos we've seen lately.

Astrid**, Bryan Fury*, Cassandra*, Heihachi Mishima*, Jin Kazama*, Steve Fox*, they all have Fire. Paid to Protect, ShadoWar, and Stand Off all have Fire. Some parity for the other 11 symbols, please? Before the flame becomes the new pitchfork?

Discussion... commence!

LordAggro said:

Already the case.

I'm hoping desperately that Fire isn't on any card in SCIV 2, but with "rumors" of Xianghua being there?

I've seen Fire on like......... 50% of cards.

I don't think I've even seen the Water symbol...

Shaneth said:

Christie/Lu Chen/Yi Shan.

That's it.

There's also an individual vanilla card in Tekken that's got Water, too.

Well, you have to remember, SCIV was originally going to be released with Tekken, so i'm sure some of the symbol balance was in relevance so that.

Fire: 146
Death: 125
Earth: 115
Life: 112
Void: 108
All: 95
Chaos: 91
Good: 89
Evil: 86
Air: 73
Order: 56
Water: 56

thats every card currently "standard" legal not including characters, draw what conclusion you like but i LOVE fire, ever since the days of my Fire Athena beating people up...

Also notice how Hata's cards have the 2 most supported symbols (Fire and Death) but the 3rd symbol on them are the least(Air and Water), coincidence?

N.J.

Fire has always been good. When a champ is given the reins I wouldn't expect him to deviate from what's worked in the past. The Universal Fire System isn't going away anytime soon.

ROTBI said:

Fire was always good, but not necessarily oversupported.

Now, it is.

I think they are tyring to get us to be aggro centered again while keeping the symbols doing what they are supposed to do. At the same time this is going to cause problems when the other symbols finally catch up. They will have to have something that make them effective in a meta of lots of control and blanking of cards. So I'm a bit concerned what type of monster is waiting in the wings.

You loons keep forgetting that these sets were designed without the forced early rotation in mind, where the symbol parity was much more inline with normality.

The forced rotation throws a lot of stuff out of whack.

Archimedes said:

Haha you're so wrong.. Fire and Death is Hata's favs. Always has been so I'm pretty sure he wants them to strive. I don't blame him! Hell if it was me Evil, Good and Order would be super broken! Plus EVERY set would have a Ryu and M. Bison...

...Actually, Fire has always had more support than anybody else; a quick look at THD shows that Fire is the only symbol to break the 1,000 card mark, and enjoys an almost 100-card advantage over the next most prominent symbol (Air). So yeah, Fire has always rolled that way. What my main issue is that most of the promos have the Fire resource symbol, and thus they get all the additional support. IMHO, that's not fair to those of us who play the other 11 symbols (and Order and Water players should be genuinely bona fide furious).

Well look at it this way. Almost everybody here seems to be complaining that there are too many cards with the fire resource symbol, which would indicate to me that none of you actually play fire decks. Did you consider that the fact no one plays fire decks might be the exact reason why there are so many fire cards? Youre complaining its unfair to the people who play the other 11 symbols, when realistically, the other 11 symbols have been unfair on fire ever since the start of block 3. One of the best Aggro characters in block 3 is *Zi Mei* who just happens to have fire, but how many people realistically played her off fire when they could play her off evil? Feel free to post all your disagreements and reasons why you believe what im saying is not true.

babelfish666 said:

I think that's a very valid perspective. I do agree with LordAggro about fire always having a ton of good cards (which I inferred about when I posted the first time) of which has helped to give fire the status of the only source that has been good/very good the entire life of UFS. What I will disagree with is the notion that it's unfair to other sources. I don't think the sources should all have the same exact number of cards as long as they are all playable to a degree. When you force 12 different sources to have an equal spread, you downplay the mechanics of what each source is supposed to do. I think from a gameplay perspective we've seen that on a few occasions. No Memories should have never had fire, for example.

I liked playing Good back when it didn't have much support. For those who don't know, when the game was in it's infancy, Good was by far the least supported symbol followed by Order. I played Choas first but as soon as I found 60 cards that worked I played Good as much as possible, because you never saw it being played and i could play my style of game with it.

I'm starting to ramble, so to get back on track, what I'm saying is: Yes, there's a ton of fire, but as long as the other 11 sources get good QUALITY (not so much quantity) cards in a playable amount the game can stay balanced and be enjoyable for everyone, regardless of your resource of choice.

LordAggro said:

I am.

Well, if it helps any, some of the Xianghua support I saw that James was running in his Kisheri deck seemed to follow the theme of Air/Life/Water, and I didn't see any Xianghua cards (at least that he played) that had Fire on them.

ShadowDragon said:

I did hear he was also using Mitsurgi cards and he did have fire.

Yeah, Mitsu's stuff seemed to have mostly All/Fire/Life, I just felt like sharing that Water was getting more support in the next set =P

heh heh FIRE FIRE..HEH HEH.

ShadowDragon said:

Yeah only problem once again is that the Water symbol is next to the life symbol....Everything that Water has...Life has. And then some.

I don't see the big problem with symbol representation being slightly skewed this early in the block. It is, after all, only natural that some symbols become front runners with limited characters and strong agressive motifs in both SC and SW.

Simply put, Fire is the agressive symbol, and right now there are alot of characters that 'scream' agro, vikings, nightmares, iron fists, etc. It only makes sense.

What would be a better argument is that the game is swayed to heavily towards agro, and this is equal to fire having the most cards. i.e. the block needs more 'tech' characters, and 'tech' symbols are more suited for water/order/void/all/chaos, etc.

I ignore Death in this analysis becuase it shares a theme with Fire, namely 'Destroy', and for the same reasons it is prevalent at the moment.

Let the block evolve, play what is there and enjoy it, and once there is enough support for all of the techs that the designers want in the game, play with your favorite to your hearts content.

- dut

MegaGeese said:

I was running Order for Wandering master and did just fine. Order's quite happy right now.

Homme Chapeau said:

Judging from the various matches I've seen with Hata using his Life Kisheri deck, if Xiang's in it, I don't think she has fire (I saw an attack of her's and an action, and they had Air-Life-Water).

From what I hear, Hata has a hard-on for Death and Fire. When you look at Tekken 6, every symbol is represented well. However, I'm definitely hoping his assumed favoritism doesn't take a hold of his creative intentions. While we haven't seen Fire in the competative seen in a while, every character with Order has Fire (except for JJ), and every character with Water has Life (except for Jon Herr).

Also, I understand that they want symbols to stay true to what they do, but does everybody with a damage pump have to have both Earth AND Fire (Ragnar, Astaroth, Bryan Fury, Heihachi Mishima).

MarcoPulleaux said:

Yeah, I find it funny how only Padma and Herr can rock Water without a plant on 'em, and JJ the only one with Scales and no Flame.

But hey, like Arch said, Fire got some good boosts, but then rotation kinda hit, and what started as "let's help Fire since it sucks" has now become meta-shifted.

I'm assuming, with rotation moved and all, that we'll get another set in Jan or Feb, and instead of those months being the time where we get starters, April becomes starter and new shuriken month.